Adventures in Sewing and Representing

 It was quite a busy, even hectic week. As you may remember, Ruby and I planned to attend the Hands Off! Protest rally at the Utah State Capitol last Saturday. Well, we certainly did that, and I’ve got some pictures at the end of the post to share. It was an inspiring and long day!

But first, let’s tend to our red sewing for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge’s color of the month for April.  I sewed ten of these 6.5” flying geese blocks. I’m loving that these are set against black - a great way to use some of the scraps that have been waiting patiently (for years,) for their turn under the needle. 

And since there are now four colors done, here they are for a group photo. I kept the number of pink blocks to a minimum because I’m wanting this to be a masculine or at least gender-neutral quilt eventually.

Last week I showed some half square triangles that had been donated to Quilts for Kids that they’d asked me (a year ago) to sew into a quilt. The 288 squares ended up making 72 blocks, which I alternated with the print on the inside for half and the print on the outside for the other half. It was a lot of repetitious sewing, but I enjoyed every moment of it. The HST’s were waste triangles that had been nicely sewn together and trimmed. I maintained their open-seam pressing and continued on that way. Before I knew it, the blocks were sewn, the blocks were put up on the design board and the top was webbed. It took less than a half hour to sew the last rows together, and it was given a good pressing.

Quilt measures 48.5 x54.5”

Today Cousin Kim and I are going to our Quilts for Kids workshop. I’m taking this as a top so they can perhaps find a backing for it. Ruby and her sister Cathy have a new longarm machine, and they’ve started quilting for QFK. So I have six of their quilts to take, along with several of mine. I’m hoping to get a nice backing for this so I can take it back to Ruby and have her quilt it. I want to see it completed! 

Next it was on to making two more blocks for my Halloween Quilt.  I have several 12” quilt block pictures I printed out from Pinterest, and these are the two I selected to do this month. I quickly graphed them out, created cutting sizes and quantities, and then had fun picking out the fabrics. The first one was rather complicated, but I was definitely up to doing all the HSTs after sewing the purple diamonds quilt top. 

The second block was so easy in comparison, it practically sewed itself. And then, since I’ve reached the halfway point of sewing the blocks that will surround the quilt panel, I had to see what it all looks like so far. 

This is not intended to be the final layout; the actual placement of the blocks will be determined once they’re all sewn. Except the bats. The four corners will each have a bat block. What do you think so far? I’m not totally in love with the batty background fabric - my preference would’ve been to have something slightly smaller in scale or with less contrast . But it is what it is, and there’s no going back now. 

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As threatened, or promised, here are some photos of the Hands Off! Protest rally that Ruby and I attended last Saturday. It was my first-ever protest (I was too young back in the sixties or early seventies), but Ruby had attended protests before. When we got there, she asked me where I wanted to be, and I said that I wanted to be right up in the thick of it. And so, over the first half hour, we wandered closer and closer to the Capitol steps, taking pictures and talking with a lot of people. 

This photo below is out of sequence, because it was taken while we were on the Capitol steps, behind the speakers. But I wanted to capture the scale. It was estimated that there were about 10,000 people there, but we both thought it was more in the range of 8,000. All the grass area in front was filled with people.

We asked someone to take our picture, and she graciously did so. The speaker at this time is standing behind the red poster just above my head. (Below). It was a beautiful, perfect sunny and warm spring day!

Everywhere, people had brought signs - some clever, or artistic; others were professionally produced or even a bit provocative. Lots of poop emojis (or costumes). People were there to advocate for their pet concerns - Medicaid, veterans, Social Security, USAid, health and science, public lands, and on and on.

I sat and talked with Lou, the veteran in the bottom left of the photo below. He served in Vietnam in the Army Intelligence just like Bruce, he was there about four or five years before Bruce, so they didn’t know each other. But we had a great conversation and I thanked him for his service. 

And I talked to the lovely Canadian woman in the picture below. She also carried a Canadian flag, but it’s not visible in the picture. She said the Canadians know that the American people are not being accurately represented by the current Trump regime. “We Canadians know you hate him as much as we do!”

And then there were the “Special Attendees” (wink), like the slightly battered Statue of Liberty…

And “Jesus”, who was doing an interview in this photo…

Yep, we made good trouble, with lots of great speeches and cheering and booing and chants…

When it was over, Ruby and I waited for the crowds to dissipate before we began driving off. We had parked her car behind the Capitol ahead of time early in the morning. On our way out, I snapped this picture with just a few people still milling around the grounds. And then it occurred to me that there was NOT ONE piece of trash on the lawn or grounds anywhere. Come to think of it, there were no misspelled signs, either. 

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions on that!! Have a great week, friends!